![]() Much of Badalamenti's score for Mulholland Drive consists of ominous droning synth and string pieces, recorded with the Prague Symphony Orchestra, which underpin the unsettling cinematography and help constitute the hallucinogenic world of the film, and which Lynch reworks and blends with abstract sound design. "Mysteries of Love," of course, became an iconic fixture in the movie. It should be a song that floats on the sea of time. He said, "Oh, just make it like the wind, Angelo. I called him and said, 'David, what a great lyric!' Then I followed it up by asking David what kind of music he wanted. There was no rhyme scheme or hook to latch on to like songs were supposed to have … But I did the smart thing that any streetwise kid from Brooklyn would do. Badalamenti asked Lynch to write the title and a few lines and recounts receiving a piece of yellow paper with the title, "Mysteries of Love." He was asked by the production company to compose an alternative to This Mortal Coil's cover of Tim Buckley's "Song to the Siren," which the director dearly wanted for a scene (and later used extensively in Lost Highway) but which bore a $75,000 sync fee. A fitting coincidence, then, that it ran into difficulties with industry politics-or some argue it's more than that…īadalamenti first met David Lynch in the mid-'80s on the set of Blue Velvet, while coaching Isabella Rossellini on her vocals for the club scene. Mulholland Drive is a hallucinatory web of illusions and delusions, and a searing indictment of Hollywood behind-the-scenes: its shady deals, shattered dreams, and the film industry's ruthless making and breaking of aspiring female actors. The movie's sound engineer, John Neff, later called it "my nemesis. He initially turned down an offer to complete it from a French production company, but after a wave of inspiration and two days of nonstop writing, he came back to them with a script. Lynch hated the final edit, and the project was abandoned after it was rejected by ABC. Originally pitched for the TV network ABC, the original pilot was cut from just over two hours down to 88 minutes to fit with the network's programming schedule. But of the lot, Mulholland Drive stands out for me as a moment that, as a teenager, my mind was opened to the possibilities of cinema and the art of great music supervision.ĭespite its current status, Mulholland Drive almost never made it off the ground. ![]() Unsurprisingly, Lynch is as hands-on in the musical direction and sound design of his movies as he is in the film direction, and his catalog is a goldmine for any music fan. His longstanding collaboration with the composer Angelo Badalamenti is widely regarded as one of the most singular creative relationships in the film world. He's written, recorded and engineered several albums, including Jocelyn Montgomery's experimental renditions of music by the 12th century visionary mystic and composer Hildegard Von Bingen, and a solo blues rock album that features Swedish singer-songwriter Lykke Li. Though he's known best for writing and directing eerie, surreal, darkly comic movies, David Lynch is a dedicated fan of music from the '50s and '60s, owns a music publishing company, Bobkind Music Ltd., and is a musician and songwriter in his own right. Mulholland Drive is many things to many people, but indisputably it sets a towering example of the heights to which a careful attention to music and sound can elevate the art of cinema. Tragic, phantasmagorical, crushingly satirical. In this new "Music in Film" series, Mike Smaczylo digs into the art and craft of great music supervision, starting with David Lynch's classic of surreal cinema.
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